Annc: COMING UP ON KVIE ARTS SHOWCASE... WE CELEBRATE ARTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD AND RIGHT HERE AT HOME.

USING ART AS A RESOURCE IN BUILDING CONNECTION AND COMMUNITY.

Jasbir: I think what makes America such a beautiful country is that all the different flavors of culture.

Annc: AN IMPACTFUL MIXED-MEDIA ARTIST Sabrina: My super power is being able to visually communicate how I feel about what's happening in the world.

Annc: A DYNAMIC SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY ART.

Sarah: It's a fast-paced show to organize and so we, we aim for that, in a way in order to capture a certain energy and newness to much of the work that's on view.

Annc: AN INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION Melissa: The vinyl, the windows, the pattern, the reflection, the interaction.

People can see the work without having to be near anyone.

Annc: A CLASSICALLY TRAINED PAINTER Stephane: It'’s just a conversation with your soul.

You are with yourself and you want to have a message in that painting.

Annc: IT'’S ALL UP NEXT ON KVIE ARTS SHOWCASE... ♪♪ Annc: THE PUNJABI AMERICAN HERITAGE SOCIETY IN YUBA CITY IS A PLACE WHERE ART IS A RESOURCE THAT HELPS BUILD CONNECTION AND UNDERSTANDING.

IT'’S ALSO PRESERVING CULTURE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.

♪♪ Annc: No matter where you look, it'’s the same -- art and culture help communities bind together, preserve and remain vibrant and strong, ♪♪ That guiding principle is why the Punjabi American Heritage Society was founded in Yuba City back in 1993.

Dr Jasbir Kang and others of the Sikh community felt a vital need to foster friendship, community, connection and collaboration.

They also wanted to help Sikh children born in the U.S. gain a better understanding and appreciation of their roots and cultural heritage.

♪♪ Dr. Kang: I think it's very important because, uh, music, food, dancing are like universal things you know...

Especially the music, is a universal language.

it's a very powerful language because Punjab is like a gateway to the South Asia, if you look at the history of South Asia, all the travelers, business people, invaders, came to India through Punjab.

So there's a lot of blending of different ideas and music... Surinder: It's very important that you preserve the culture When we see all these kids, they're getting connected with that, um, the language purposes, so they can read, they can learn the history.

They can feel that culture... And when I see these students, they need to know, especially our coming generation.

If they don't know this language and the culture part, everything will be lost and they won't get to feel that value for this language and culture.

Annc: Doctor Kang says they'’ve succeeded in helping their community regain pride in their traditions and history...while finding new ways to celebrate and share their culture with others...all while recognizing and appreciating the unique aspects of other cultures.

Dr. Kang: I think what makes America such a beautiful country is that all the different flavors of culture...

Some people feel like if you want to be an American than you have to be certain culture, I mean, that could put a lot of pressure on youngsters, kids in high school, trying to be something that they are not.

I tell kids, Hey, you could be a great American at the same time, you can preserve some of the beauty of your heritage and culture.

Bicky: ...Sikhs ....they have wonderful stories.

And there have been a fabric of this nation, but not everybody in America can go to the Gurdwara and to learn so digitally these stories, they have to be told... ... post 9/11, we got more involved with the media and film work.

And we basically, uh, you know, after immediately after 9/11, there was a backlash and, you know, the turban and beard, became our identity.

Annc: Throughout history art has been a resource in helping build connection, while gaining understanding and preserving culture.

Art helps people reach that greater understanding through sharing stories.

♪♪ Bicky: Some of the Sikhs... have been here for more than a hundred years.

I think arts and culture and films are a really good platform... ♪♪ Dr. Kang: In all culture there is going to be evolution.

But why is it important to preserve certain traditions and certain musics...

But these are learned experience collectively by group of people in one part of the world over thousands of years.

I mean, there's a beauty.

I mean, there is that people have been through different struggles, different challenges, but this experience evolve over thousands of years, You just don't want to destroy it and let it go.

Dr. Kang: I think that art is the finest expression of, uh, human, uh, intellectual and I would say our skills and our expressions.

So arts plays a big role in how the culture evolves and how you interact with your other fellow human beings.

Surinder: We don'’t have to lose whatever we have... actually we are adding to the whole society and the culture.

...once you, what you know, you are contributing to the community and once you're contributing to the community, we will understand each other better.

♪♪ ♪♪ Annc: DETROIT, MICHIGAN ARTIST SABRINA NELSON REFLECTS ON THE WORLD AROUND HER IN HER MEANINGFUL WORKS OF ART.

LET'’S TAKE A LOOK INSIDE HER EXHIBITION "“WHY YOU WANNA FLY BLACKBIRD"” ♪♪ I think my medicine is art, my language is art.

♪♪ I think the term artist means to be responsible for what's happening in the world.

How you see it, how you record it.

How you make things that are a result of what you are trying to say.

Whether it's a question you're answering or a story you're trying to tell or here's something I need to make because it's just embedded in me like I have to make something.

Detroit is embedded in who I am.

I've been here all my life since the rebellion in 1967, that's when I was born.

And so everything around me becomes a part of the story I'm trying to tell or the question I'm trying to ask.

My super power is being able to visually communicate how I feel about what's happening in the world.

Nina Simone says, if you're going to be an artist, it's your duty to reflect what's happening in the world.

And in the world that I live in, from the time I can remember remembering, there's always trauma and hurt and pain.

And I'm not always talking about that, but you can't ignore it.

And on this day I think about, the lives that are lost, that are constant but coming at me through different mediums.

And so I'm thinking about homicides and deaths of young people and how I am affected by it.

But I'm talking about death where people aren't considered people, like you don't matter.

You, you're not important.

So I'm just going to take your life.

I don't care how old you are, I don't care who you belong to and when that person is missing from our communities, not just the blood family is affected.

We are all and we should all be concerned.

You know, a life is a life.

A human is a human.

And so in this work I'm talking about that pain.

The name of the exhibition is Why You Wanna Fly Blackbird.

And I got it from a Nina Simone song who talks about black women, like, how dare you try and be happy in your life.

How dare you not expect pain.

Pain is gonna come.

You have to move through it and you have to live.

But pain will be here.

I didn't want the colors to be so seductive that it draws you in as pretty, like, I don't like the idea of my work being pretty.

I want it to be impactful.

I want it to be deeper than just what you see.

And I wanted it to be large enough to have some girth to it.

So these particular pieces are very large drawings.

They're also reliquaries, if you will.

So they talk about like the body, the housing of the bodies that we have, like the home and then what it's like to have a nest with no eggs in it.

Thinking about the empty nest of children who never return.

You know, I don't care how old they are, they never can return.

So I'm just talking about the darkness in that and expressing it with the most eloquence that I can.

The cages will represent empty homes.

That can be the home that they lived in.

That can be the community that they lived in.

how do you deal with that?

You know, that womb that's empty?

And so when we lose these people that are not treated with value out of our communities, how do you deal with that?

I want people to pay attention to it and to be more empathetic with others' lives.

If you see something happening, and you can do something about it, why wouldn'’t you?

And so when I look at the homicide rates across the country, they're incredibly high for African American, indigenous, and also Latin American children.

And so if this is all I can say and do about it, I want someone to know that I care, even though they're not my children, I care that they're missing, that they're gone, that there's, you know, somebody should think about doing something about it.

Every artist wants someone to look at their work for a long time and I didn't want to make it so obvious and obtruse where it's like, you know, you see people getting killed.

But I think the work and the drawings and some of the paintings that I'm using can be seductive.

So I want people to make sure that they walk away with knowing that I'm in a world, I am affected by it and don't just listen to the news and be in the world and not really take part in what's happening.

Think about what your voice is and what your superpower is, and see what you can do to help.

I want to say something that'’s important and I want to leave this world with something that someone's learned from me.

My work might be sensual to draw you in and then it's gonna slap you a little bit.

And that's what I hope I show.

♪♪ Annc: LET'’S TAKE A LOOK BACK AT THE 2019 DECORDOVA NEW ENGLAND ART EVENT IN MASSACHUSETTS.

IT FEATURES TWENTY-THREE ARTISTS FROM THE NEW ENGLAND AREA.

Chanel: I'’m really interested as an artist in ensuring that the average person is honored, loved and appreciated.

Yoav: This is not really artwork as much as it'’s my involvement with the community.

Emilie: How do we come together, in love and understanding for each other?

And that's, what I'm thinking about with this painting?

Jared: Here there is art made with love and beeswax.

In the warmth of a bonfire, it roots around in the memories of home [Jordan Seaberry] and slices to the heart of identity.

This is the deCordova New England Biennial 2019-—23 artists who the museum has decided are making the most dynamic art right now.

Like Chanel Thervil from Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Thervil: This is actually one of my mentors, Napoleon Jones-Henderson.

Um he's a phenomenal artist.

And one thing I take pride in is being able to make him laugh.

Jared: Thervil paints people she knows, but in ways she has to discover through a series of questions designed to bring out their true selves.

Thervil: The interviews really consists of me asking them everything, from, "what's their favorite food?"

to, "how did you learn how to be a man?"

Too.

"Where did you learn about love?"

Like the range of questions really shifts.

Um, depending on the person I'm talking to, because.

Uh, the relationship I already have with them informs the types of emotions or expressions I know that their face is capable of.

Jared: You'’ll find her self-portrait and paintings of her mentors-—but always created as busts.

Thervil: So for me like getting from the heart to the head.

Uh-is really important to me because it's, I feel like that's where the base of the soul is like in between.

Sarah: So we're looking at a painting by Anoka Faruqee and David Driscoll, painters in New Haven.

Um and they are exploring the many ways in which moire patterning can be effectively presented on their - through a circle di-diagram.

Jared: Sarah Montross is the Biennial'’s curator.

Starting in late 2017 she visitited all six New England states-—touring the studios of some 60 artists.

It'’s designed to be a brief, intense process.

Sarah: It's a fast -paced show to organize and so we, we aim for that, in a way in order to capture a certain energy and newness to much of the work that's on view.

Jared: Maine artist Emilie Stark-Menneg is represented here in both a video and a sprawling painting-—both tap into fantasy and the supernatural.

But they are rooted in the friendship she shares with poet and collaborator Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.

Emilie: Lyrae is um pictured in the piece, and then.

Where the seam of the two canvases come together is, representation of a mask of Martha Washington.

She was one of these apparitions that was coming up for us when we were thinking about.

Friendship, and friendship across racial lines, and.

How do we see each other?

Jared: It'’s a theme that plays out in cutting parody, and with a sinister edge in her short film.

Emilie: I am constantly going back and forth between different mediums-—sometimes I wish that I had one, you know, medium there's this kind of back and forth that... And I think of the videos as moving paintings.

Montross: "“There were tendencies contemporary art tendencies that are rising to the surface and, those to us then define the scope of the show.

Jared: While Sarah Montross says there is no one theme to this year'’s biennial, she did find a number of artists exploring personal narratives.

Like the immigrants Yoav Horesh has photographed in New Hampshire.

Yoav: "“We're talking about tens of thousands of - of African, immigrants and -and refugees, that arrived in New Hampshire in the past five to 10 years.

Uh and it's a sizable community that unfortunately we don't really get to have any exposure to.

Jared: Horesh uses a large format camera from the 1950s which slows down his process-—allowing him to spend more time getting to know his subjects.

He'’s titled his series, New American Farmers.

Horesh: They are doing the exact same work, that more than a hundred years ago pioneers that arrived in Manchester, or New Hampshire to work the mills.

Immigrants from Europe, and immigrants from uh, Canada.

Uh, now these are immigrants from Africa, and I think that they have the same, place in history.

Uh, as, as pioneers that we all very, y'know, proud of.

Jared: At the deCordova now, there are layers of stories and histories.

They crack open our perceptions and offer different ways to see ourselves.

They remind us of the beauty in the world and the thrill of finding the art of the new.

♪♪ Annc: IN RESPONSE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, COLUMBUS, OHIO ARTIST MELISSA VOGLEY WOODS SET UP A PUBLIC INSTALLATION AT HER HOME.

HER EFFORTS ALLOWED VIEWERS TO CONNECT WITH ART AT A SAFE DISTANCE.

♪♪ Malissa: So, this was, back in March when I started the work.

It's just called "Always."

♪♪ I really wanted to do a piece that was in the public eye, that addressed the very fresh condition of dealing with the pandemic.

And I realized that I really wanted to talk about getting past this moment.

I started to look at art from different eras, after certain plagues, and the pandemic that was the closest in relationship was the Spanish flu -- what they called the Spanish flu.

So I started to look at work that was made in the exact year when it ended, which was 1920.

I found a piece by Raoul Dufy that was a pattern, like a fabric pattern that he had designed which I felt was perfect.

And it would block the window and block the view, but also accentuate the space in between public and private.

We were stuck at home.

I had to deal with what I had at my house.

And I just happened to have this high-reflective vinyl that I had used on a similar project in 2010.

The vinyl itself is just like a very neutral gray, and you can't really see it unless you use a flash.

♪♪ So the work itself can be seen in the daylight, but it's most effective at night, when you bring your cellphone and turn on the flash.

♪♪ Now because it's high-density reflective vinyl, it flashes back the equal intensity of the light.

So when you do use a flash on your camera, on your phone, all of the pattern lights back at you.

And so that just came naturally.

I was like -- the vinyl, the windows, the pattern, the reflection, the interaction.

People can see the work without having to be near anyone.

You can activate it from your car.

Anna: So over my shoulder is a really exciting piece by Melissa Vogley Woods and it's called "“Always CMA."

and it's actually a piece that has a pattern that was extrapolated from a work from our collection.

It's Louis Bouche's "Still Life with Flowers" that was painted in 1919, during the Spanish influenza.

And Melissa had the wonderful idea to kind of remind everybody that we are in a very difficult moment, but that it will pass.

Melissa: With this work, it was the same concept to make the same point.

But it really leveraged art history in a different way, because it is at an institution.

Anna: And she took the pattern from this more traditional looking still life, with a big, beautiful, energetic grouping of flowers.

And she made a very abstract geometric pattern, which she then tiled into this beautiful wallpaper to cover this whole glass canopy.

Melissa: Something about the light being brought to the piece from within, that you have that light on you.

And this piece is just a reflection of what you already hold in yourself.

And I felt that was really important.

Shining this kind of beacon of hope back to the people who came to see the work.

We are at Hammond Harkins Gallery.

And this is my exhibition called "Out of the Blue."

it's a series of 36 cyanotype photograms.

So a cyanotype is like a photographic print, because it uses light.

When you block the sun, those areas don't expose.

And it just happens to expose to blue.

So there's some really direct contacts between the "Always" installations and this work, which is visible in this pattern.

And that pattern is pulled directly from a combination of the "Always" pattern at my house and the "Always" pattern at CMA.

The idea of this show really came out from the shadows that I see on the inside of my house when people take photos.

I started to think about, "well, what is the internal view of this external piece that I made?"

and it became really important that I did a process that was photographic, that was based on light, because the other piece was based on light.

Which then connects to my ideas about, like, history and erasure and what is brought to the light and what is suppressed.

♪♪ Annc: WE TRAVEL TO VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA TO meet THE CLASSICALLY TRAINED FRENCH PAINTER STEPHANE CELLIER MELDS PAST AND PRESENT IN HIS ART.

USING A TECHNIQUE FROM THE 15TH CENTURY, HE PAINTS EYE-CATCHING MODERN SUBJECTS.

♪♪ I'm Stephane Cellier and I'm an artist, I'm a painter.

I came from France seven years ago now because I love United States so I sold everything I had in France and came here.

So I paint, I use a technique from the French masters from the 15th century to now, like the glazing, I'm using on that one, the multiple glazing with transparency.

So like de Vries, I paint in black and white first and add the colors on the top, with transparency, so different kind of techniques like that.

I work on the wood panel and usually I paint subjects that are more modern with classical techniques so it looks really classical but when you take the time to watch it, it's a little bit different.

I get that training in France when I was in the French National Fine Art school.

The real first step , it's the creation of the design, so I've got some images that appears in my brain, that's why my wife think I'm nuts, she's probably right.

I look at pictures, I try to find picture to see how I can create my compilation.

First step, to create the design, so I can create my design and after that, I start to draw.

I just draw and painting, painting, painting.

So I will start with a dead layer to put the, very quickly, the light and shadow, to look, and after that I will add layers and layers and I build the painting.

You build almost like a sculpture.

You add layers and layers to build the shape, because everything we see, it's because of the light.

So the shape is created by the light so you need to add layers and layers to create all the small differences in the light and create the shape.

It's a long, long process.

I will add layers with transparency, a little bit like when you use sunglasses, different kind of colors, so they will blend together like filters, and you change till you obtain the transparency and the texture of the skin.

Sometimes, like this one, there is around 50 different layers to create the texture on the skin and the transparency and the light inside.

It's hard to stop because when you are in this process, you are in another world, there is nothing else around you, and you work with the inside of yourself, of your deep thought.

It's just a conversation with your soul, that's all.

You are with yourself and you talk to yourself and you want to have a message in that painting.

You want to put the emotion you feel when you paint on the palette and on the painting.

It's really a meditation process.

In my painting, I try to express something that disturb me or something I like.

And sometimes what I like it's when the people who will, the viewer who will see the painting, they will try to find a message about me, but usually they will find something about themself, that's what I like.

So, it reflects more what people think about it, about the message I really put in that, because my vision is completely different, probably.

All the viewers will have an opinion, different opinion of that painting, that's my goal.

So it's more like a mirror.

They can see what are their real deep thought and how they are.

So I want people to feel something.

Even if they don't like it and they say, oh it's disgusting.

It's okay, there is an emotion, it works.

So, yeah, that's what I want.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Annc: Episodes of KVIE Arts showcase along with other KVIE programs are available to watch online at kvie.org/video.